“Oil-rich and strategically located, Libya is not Western Sahara or the Ivory Coast. The reiterations by Obama and his British and French counterparts that “Qaddafi must go” put Western prestige on the line. So, say events proceed as the West appears to hope and the rebels somehow manage to dislodge the colonel. Or say the US-British-French troika deals the death blow itself. What then? Who will emerge to reconstruct a strong, central state? Who will the West back from among the rebels’ disparate ranks? As the veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn contends, it is likely to be those “who speak the best English” and are “prepared to go before Congress to express fulsome gratitude for America’s actions.” One might add that they are apt to be the most willing to give favorable terms to Western oil firms for invigorated exploration and exploitation of the country’s hydrocarbon deposits. Whether scions of the royal family deposed by Qaddafi in 1969 or renegades from the colonel’s subsequent regime, these elements are sure to be heavier on opportunism than on popular legitimacy. This Libya would look nothing like the democratic state of liberal interventionist dreams, and quite a bit like post-Saddam Iraq.”